Israeli troops mounted an incursion into a Palestinian area of the West Bank early on Monday after killing five Palestinian policemen and rocketing security targets in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
In a night of intense violence, Israeli soldiers demolished a Palestinian police station in a suburb of the West Bank Palestinian-ruled town of Tulkarem and then entered the town and destroyed a house, the mayor of Tulkarem told Reuters.
Earlier, a Palestinian member of an ambulance crew, who declined to be named, said his team had found the bodies of five men from the Palestinian National Forces killed by heavy machinegun fire and dumped in a hole near Beitunia, west of Ramallah.
Earlier, Israeli helicopter gunships and navy ships fired at least 15 missiles at four areas in the Gaza Strip, including a security installation near Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Gaza headquarters early on Monday.
The helicopters hovered over Gaza City before opening fire at an installation belonging to Arafat's Force 17 presidential guard, witnesses told Reuters.
The building is about 300 meters (yards) from Arafat's Gaza headquarters.
A senior Palestinian police officer told Al Jazeera satellite channel that the rockets were passing over Arafat's office where the leader was holding a meeting.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. Naval gunships also attacked security installations in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and near Gaza's Deir El Balah refugee camp.
Sources said Israeli naval boats also pounded a Palestinian naval police position along the Gaza coastline near the Netzarim Jewish settlement late on Sunday.
Responding to the reports of an attack on a Palestinian naval position, an Israeli military source said the attack was "part of the Israeli army's response to a spate of mortar attacks over the weekend" against Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli farming communities near the densely populated strip.
The officer told the station that there had been no attacks by Palestinians on Israeli targets in the occupied area.
Earlier, the village of Al Khader near Bethlehem was placed under a curfew after an Israeli settler was injured in a Palestinian attack. Israeli forces stormed houses in the village looking for the attackers. Another settler was injured in Nablus, reported Al Jazeera.
The Jewish settlers were wounded in shooting ambushes on roads. In Gaza, Israeli bulldozers destroyed houses in what Palestinians said was the latest in a series of Israeli military incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas, said Reuters.
Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian cabinet minister on Sunday ruled out a resumption of negotiations with Israel unless there was a halt to all settlement building on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Planning Minister Nabil Shaath told a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah that the world was starting to realize that a freeze on settlement construction in occupied lands was needed to reduce the violence and restart stalled peace talks.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan accused Israel of using "excessive force" in responding to the Palestinian uprising, adding in an interview with Reuters in Brussels that talks between the two sides had produced meager results.
"But I would hope that in time it will lead to a ceasefire amongst the two, easing of the economic restrictions on the Palestinian people and eventually getting the two to the table to discuss their issues," Annan said.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat left for New York for talks with Annan on the hardships endured by Palestinians as a result of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel says limits on travel are needed to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants.
In Washington, a Palestinian official said details were being worked out for a meeting on Monday or Tuesday between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Palestinian negotiator Mahmoud Abbas, due in the United States for a medical checkup, reported the agency.
"The purpose of the meeting is definitely to try to restart the peace process and get out of the situation we are in now," Hassan Abdel Rahman, the Palestine Liberation Organization's Washington representative, told Reuters.
Abbas was said to be arriving in Washington to submit the PNA's response to the Mitchell Commission's report on ways to end the Middle East "violence."
At his news conference, Shaath denounced Israeli settlement building as "a crime, building illegally on occupied land."
"This time it's now or never. Israeli settlement policy has to stop...It's our precondition" for restarting peace talks, Shaath said. Israel has said it cannot resume peace talks until the violence ceases.
Israel has built 145 settlements on lands it occupied in the 1967 war. Some 200,000 settlers live in the West Bank and Gaza, home to about 3 million Palestinians.
Settlements, which are at the heart of the Palestinian uprising, are illegal under international law.
For his part, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said his country would not build new settlements and would not confiscate land from Palestinians, but it would expand existing settlements to accommodate the natural growth of their populations.
"The further issues concerning the settlements should be negotiated in the framework of the negotiations between us and the Palestinians," Peres said after meeting his Canadian counterpart John Manley.
Manley called on Israel to heed Mitchell US-led commission's recommendations and halt all settlement construction - Albawaba.com
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